Foreclosures Are More Than Just Numbers

I purchased my old farmhouse nineteen years and six months ago. That is significant to me because I have a twenty-year mortgage on the home and have six payments left until the old house is entirely mine. The house isn’t much to look at and has pretty much been an ongoing restoration project for nineteen years and six months, but it keeps me dry and somewhat warm in the winter, and in six months it will be entirely mine.

I know some financial experts say you should always have a mortgage on your house to take advantage of tax deductions and that refinancing money is cheap these days, but I don’t care what the experts say about it. Financial experts have been saying a lot of things the past 10 years and I’m starting to question who made them experts. I want the comfort of going to bed every night knowing that I own my house free and clear; and regardless of what happens with the economy, it will remain my ongoing restoration project.

One Million Foreclosures Projected This Year

I think we hear so many large numbers bandied about these days that they have started to lose their ability to shock us with their significance. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that the country may have a one-trillion-dollar deficit the first nine months of the fiscal year, and we move on to the next article after a moment’s thought–just another difficult number to comprehend.

But CBS News reports that we are on track for one million families to lose their homes to foreclosure this year and over 900,000 families lost their homes last year. Almost two million families started last year thinking they were living the American Dream, and by the end of this year none of them may be. I know that some of the homes were investment properties, and some of the families bought more house than they could afford, but I’m also sure that a lot of the homes are foreclosures due to unemployment, falling property values, and an inability to sell in the current real estate market.

If you can’t imagine what two million families might look like, the U.S. Census reports that in 2008 there were about 2,152,040 housing units in Colorado. This figure would include rental properties, condos, apartments, and single-family attached and detached homes. Imagine that in 2008 just about everyone in Colorado who lived in those housing units was told they had to move to another state! That’s kind of what two million families losing their homes would be like.

I don’t care what the experts say; I like the thought of only having six payments left on my old house.